Podcast Transcription: The Simple Framework That Cuts Through Confusing Fitness Advice and Helps You Train for Longevity with Alex Viada

Ted Ryce: Alex Vada, thanks so much for coming back on the show, man. I think this is your third time on Legendary Life podcast.  

Alex Viada: I, I think so. I think so. And I, I know just before this we were just trying to figure out when the last time was, but you know, all the years kind of blend together at this point.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. And we take off the, the dates of the podcast. 

I don't know why we do that. Probably an SEO reason or something. So I did look up one of the previous episodes, but I was like, it was episode 1 45. But, uh, anyway, happy to have you back on and man, today I want to talk about something that I think a lot of people are starting to hear about, but they don't know. 

You are the guy who, at least a lot of people credit with coming up with the term, which is hybrid athlete. Did you make that up or?  

Alex Viada: I did actually make up the term and I made up the term. Alright. Just, just to give you the history on this, because I think it was kind of funny and, um, you know, when, when I first started writing about like combining strength training and endurance training and, you know, we can get into like exactly what I mean by hybrid. 

I started writing about it in like 2007, 2008 when I was just a, you know, wannabe powerlifter who was trying to run five, you know, marathons and struggling. Um. About that time, like, you know, if, if a lot of folks remember back to then, like a lot of sports were very, very siloed. Like CrossFit wasn't big yet. 

Nobody had heard of the term hybrid because it didn't exist yet. And you know, if you were a gym rat, you were a gym rat. If you liked cycling and you were a, you know, uh, somebody who loved being on the bike, like that was your thing. You didn't dabble in the weight room. What he absolutely had to, like, we really went through quite a number of decades there where everything was really specialized. 

So that's kind of when I started writing about this kind of stuff and, you know, the combination and what it could do for your health and, you know, trying to get people excited about trying new and different sports and. I wrote the, the book, uh, back in, like I was putting a manuscript together in like 2012, uh, for the book to be published, I think about two years later. 

And I came up with a name hybrid athlete because I was on a deadline and they said, we need a name for this book. We need a name for this sort of concurrent training you're doing. And I was thinking about terms that meant like combining more than one thing and I was thinking multiple energy systems and just said, you know what, like hybrid sounds like a good description. 

We'll we'll call these hybrid athletes. And that's where the term came from. And that was it. Like that was  

Ted Ryce: awesome man. And I bring that up because I don't know if you're listening right now and you've heard that term yet, but it's becoming more and more popular to hear. And from my perspective, it makes sense. 

Why? Because we're starting to learn guys who overdo endurance, there are marathoners, triathletes, et cetera. They need to be in the gym, more lifting weights if they want to do all the things that they want to, if they want to keep doing those things when they're seventies and their eighties and probably ar arguably more important, the guys who lift weights and think it's really cool to be super strong and which it is, and have big muscles. 

We're starting to learn now. Like VO two Max is something Peter Attia talks about and, and others. Andrew Huberman about it being one of the best metrics to determine how long you're gonna live, what type of health you're gonna have. And, but man, a lot of people don't know you. Joel Jameson, a couple other folks. 

You know, uh, their names escape me. You guys were talking about this stuff long before they were, right before they brought it up. So can you talk a little bit about what it means to be a hybrid athlete and, and why someone who's interested in longevity? 'cause most of the people listening right now, that's what they're interested in. 

They don't just want to be in shape for a short period of time, but they want to be able to play with their kid, their kids, or their grandkids avoid preventable diseases. So why is hybrid training important to those folks?  

Alex Viada: Yeah, and I, I think what, what, what that really hits on is, so the idea of hybrid training is it's not just like strength and endurance. 

The idea of hybrid training is being able to look at all the different things that you can do physically is being able to say like, yeah, I like the idea of being able to go, like hike with my family on the weekends. I love getting on the bike sometime during the week and maybe I wanna do a triathlon, but lifting weights is really important to me too. 

And it's saying that, okay, all these things you wanna do for health, all these things you wanna do for your hobbies, for your enjoyment, this, that, the other. It's really hard. Do them all. It's really hard to find the time to get them all in. And one of the things that most of us don't wanna do is we don't wanna just say, alright, well you know what, I, I should probably lift weight, so I'm just gonna find this lifting program and yeah, I should probably run more. 

So either I'm just gonna run a couple miles every day. Ah, is that overdo it? Is that underdoing it? Maybe I'll just grab a couch to 5K program. And what ends up is people end up getting kind of confused. There's, there's a lot to do. A lot of these ideas, conflict with each other. People designing your running program may not be thinking about how much you're lifting. 

People who think about who designing your lifting program may not be thinking about, yeah, you wanna have fresh legs on the weekend to like, you know, go for hikes and things like that. Hybrid training is all about being able to look at all the different kinds of training you're doing and saying what's really important to get me where I wanna be. 

When it comes to lifting weights, what do I need to do? What is the best thing for me to do so that I can lift weights, get stronger, get bigger, do whatever your goal is and not be killing myself in there with all this unnecessary work. If I wanna get a better cardiovascular system, wanna get a better cardiovascular shake, how much do I need to run per week? 

You know, how long does each run need to be? What do I need to do to be the, the best runner or in the best shape I can be assuming I don't have infinite amounts of time. So a lot of it came from this idea. 'cause hybrid training is all about, it's all about efficiency, really. And you know, a lot of this has taken an idea like, yeah, if you wanna be the best marathon runner you can be and the best powerlifter you can be, you've really gotta be dialed in what you do for each one. 

You take those same ideas and you apply them to somebody who just wants to be in better shape. You're thinking, okay, you know, I don't need to be an elite power lifter. I don't need to be an elite marathon runner. I'm not gonna be spending 95% of my energy on these things. I'm only gonna be spending 50% of my energy on those things because I need that 50% for other stuff as well. 

So how do I invest this time and energy into being healthy, being the healthiest I can be, and do it efficiently? Do it in such a way that I feel good after these sessions. I don't feel sore all the time. So a lot of the hybrid principles are really based around that, and I think that's what's, that's what's so important to me about it, especially as I get older, you know, like I'm, you know, my mid forties now, I'm not necessarily thinking about, okay, you know, I'm gonna go out there and, you know, set world records and anything. 

I'm just like, Hey, I just, I wanna keep feeling healthy. I wanna keep feeling good.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah, so important and I, I wanna get into some mistakes that people make because I think you already touched on it with, I'll, I'll reference Peter Atia again. He's got, he's one of the people who, and Rhonda Patrick, they have you thinking about like, or have the average person who's. 

Listening to podcasts, and they're thinking about like, okay, so, um, they're confused about, okay, so I need to lift weights, but how strong do I need to be? Do I need to bench press two times my body weight? But oh, also, um, I need a high VO two max. And man, how do I do that? Because I know there's zone two and I need to do that, but I need to spend a lot of time to get the results. 

But then there's high intensity interval training. But how do you, I I, I could only imagine listening to all these different people talking about this stuff, trying to put it at together on trying to type it all into chat, GGPT and spitting out a program. Then you do it and you're just getting crushed. 

Right. Yeah,  

Alex Viada: exactly. Exactly. And it's true because there's so many things and it's like, it almost feels like every week we, we think about something else that we should be doing for optimal health. And like you're saying, like, okay, should I be doing Norwegian four by four VO two repeats twice a week? How many hours of zone two do I need to be doing? 

Okay, I should be lifting. Should I also be doing like, uh, you know, plyometrics, uh, you know, because I hear those are good. How much mobility work should I be doing? How many days a week should I lift upper body? How many days a week should I lift lower body? And it all, it does, it becomes overwhelming. And you know, like I said, while, while hybrid was originally a method that was designed for like performance perform, when it comes down to it, it's really, you know, I was having a discussion with, uh, you, you're familiar with Spencer Naski? 

Ted Ryce: Sure. He's been on the show a couple times.  

Alex Viada: Yeah, he's, he's a great dude and I had discussions with him very early on, and I always referenced this, uh, because I was doing some of his programming for a while. He was interested in doing a triathlon and some other stuff, and he said, you know, this program is exactly what I would give my clients, my patients just for optimum health, right? 

'cause it gives them just a little bit of everything that they need. It tells them how much high intensity work to do, how much zone two work to do, how to fit it all together. Like, that's kind of the takeaway is that how do I do enough of each to get better without just grinding myself into the ground? 

Ted Ryce: Yeah. And I, I just want to take a moment here for a shameless plug because one of the reasons, uh, we got you back on the show is because you have this book, it's not even out yet. It's coming out on December 2nd, 2025, in case you're listening. It's called The Ultimate Hybrid Athlete, A Definitive Guide to Achieving Peak Athleticism Across All Disciplines. 

And let me tell you something. I don't read books about training very much anymore. Most of 'em suck. The diet ones are even worse, but I can't wait to get my hands on this one. The last book I read, your last book, it was many years ago. And, uh, really looking forward to the updates. So let's get back to this idea and, and, well, I forgot, you should buy this book if you're. 

If you're listening to Peter Attia, Rhonda Patrick and Andrew Huber, all the people talking about all the stuff and how to put it all together, and you're trying to figure that out, um, I think you got something like 20 training templates or 20, uh, programs in, in the book  

Alex Viada: and the programs, like I, I've definitely tried to make them accessible like lots of substitutions, mix and match almost a a choose your own adventure sort of thing. 

Like if you find a program you like, you know, you wanna just do your basic strength training and lit and, and running, you know, there's a whole battery of different types of running workouts. You can do a whole battery of different types of lifting sessions, movements you can do. So the whole, I I think the whole idea is always like, again, reinforcing what I'm saying, like it's, we wanna make this accessible for people. 

It's, it's meant to be like, hybrid training is basically a way of saying, it was always my idea to just get people doing more different things and feeling good about it.  

Ted Ryce: Love it, and. Alex, you brought up, I wanna hear your thoughts on this because you brought up the Norwegian four by four, which if you're listening, it's four minutes of high. 

It, it's a well researched, high intensity interval training program, uh, that a lot of people keep bringing up. Rhon de Patrick, Peter att, uh, and then people parrot it, right? There's all the, the people who say it. I tried it with, uh, you know, back when, before Peter Attia had his podcast, you know, we were doing this stuff with clients. 

I remember a client telling me like. If this is what I have to do to live longer, I think I'm okay with dying younger. I think I'm okay. And, and if you have never done it before and you don't know why, uh, we're, we're laughing right now. Because if you just read that and say, oh, well I need to be doing this, and you're, you don't have much of a cardiovascular base, you're just kinda lifting weights and you do it, it is, might make you puke or e even if you finish it. 

Can you talk about, like, talk about your thoughts on the influencers and, and talking about, you know, the Norwegian and how should someone start off with hit training?  

Alex Viada: Yeah, so, so the thing about the four by four is you, you know, your, your VO two max, just in, in practical terms, one of the ways you can actually test your VO two max power or pace is by just seeing how hard you can go all out for like 10 to 11 minutes. 

You know, because you've heard about, like, you know, your, like let's say your, your V2 max is like the pace you can run at, where you'll be running at your VO two max, essentially, and that's usually something that lasts about 10 to 11 minutes in the best case scenario. So if you think about it, four by four is four rounds of four minutes. 

Where normally after 10 minutes of doing so, you'd be on the floor absolutely shattered. You're doing 16 minutes granted with short breaks, but 16 minutes at a pace that after two minutes probably leaves you feeling like that. So it's really, really tough. It's absolutely crushingly difficult. So, but what's interesting about, it's the whole point of the four by four, the whole point of all of that, VBO two, max VO two max training is to get your system operating as close as possible to your VO two max maximum oxygen utilization. 

That is your aerobic system is absolutely maxed out. Your body is your, all your muscles and circulatory system are using as much oxygen as possible. It's a huge stimulus to all of those pathways. Responsible for aerobic health and development is a very potent stimulus. The point of four by four is to say, okay, this is one way we found of being able to get an athlete to spend 16 minutes. 

At their VO two max in a single session. That is a huge stimulus. It's fantastic if you're an elite athlete, you can do that protocol like you know, once a week and get a lot of benefits from it in addition to all the rest of the training. But at the same time, there are a lot of different protocols that achieve the same effect. 

There are micro intervals which are 30 seconds, all out 30 seconds, rest 30 seconds, all out, 30 seconds rest. And you know, you'll have people doing 15 to 20 rounds of that much easier in a lot of ways. Still feels horrible, don't get me wrong. But the point of that is you do that 30 seconds all out and then the 30 seconds rest, your system is still at operating at max efficiency, trying to get all that oxygen out to those absolutely depleted muscles and everything else. 

So that works too. There are 40, 20 intervals, 40 seconds all out, 20 seconds rest. There are surge and hold intervals where you do 30 seconds at your VO two max or close to all out. And then like. At a slightly lower level of intensity. So there are a lot of ways to do it, but the point of all this, and if somebody practically wants to say, okay, four by four sounds horrible. 

How do I improve my VO two max without doing something that is gonna make me wanna just curl up into a ball and die? You say, alright, lemme try the 30, 30, 30. Lemme try four minutes, three rounds of four minutes of 30 seconds, all out, 30 seconds off. I'm not gonna care about power. I'm just gonna go as hard as I can for 30 seconds, rest for 30 seconds. 

That works really, really well and it's a lot more manageable for people. Wanna spend two to three minutes, my possible two minutes all out. 

I'm five minutes just to get my life together after every round. But I'm gonna try to do three of those in a session. That's still gonna give you a pretty big stimulus. So the point is just to say how many minutes total in a session, once per week, can I spend at that really high level of intensity and still get it done? 

So there are a lot of ways for people to do this, and if you're relatively new to that kind of training, you could say, alright, this week I was able to do three rounds of a minute and a half at that intensity, five minutes in between, I was crushed. You know what? A good stimulus the next week. You try a minute, 45 seconds each time. 

Just keep trying to up it just a little bit every single week. Give yourself a lot of grace with it. This is tough training four by four is meant for elite athletes who are, you know, they glasses of, you know, for dinner. Like that's, that's what they do. Uh, so it's, it really is, it's, there are a lot of ways to get it done. 

Even within the Norwegian system, there are a lot of coaches who use those different methods, those micro intervals, those longer, longer and slightly slower intervals. You know, three by eight minutes at just over threshold intensity, things like that. So the whole point really is to say, Hey, let's get people accustomed to working hard and thinking about accumulating total minutes of hard work, not necessarily all in one go. 

I think that's kind of what's key.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. And, and just to, to restate that, it's. The four by four and all the other intervals. It's just a way to accumulate those minutes at that intensity. It's not about like, um, a lot of people, I think, oversell the idea of these intervals that have research on them. So, man, there's so many questions I want to ask you, Alex, and, and I guess one of the first ones is 'cause a, a lot of people say a lot of things about this stuff, and I'm not, I, I consider myself a world class expert in what I do Exactly. 

But when it comes to a lot of this interval and, and the endurance stuff, like, whoa, I have a lot to learn. So it's so good to talk to you. But let's start with this, you mentioned something interesting when you were giving examples. You shouldn't be paying or, or you didn't say this, but you hinted at, it's not so important that if your, if your power drops off, let's say you're on a bike and you're measuring the intensity of your intervals by wattage, right? 

And the power stops dropping. I've seen people on Twitter 'cause that's where I sort of x where I spend most of my time these days, social media wise. Um, and I've seen endurance guys more schooled than me. Um, on this particular subject. Talk about like, once you drop off a certain percentage, maybe 10%, I forget what it was like. 

You should stop because you're, it's kind of like. When you're working a muscle and you're like, okay, I hit failure, but let's do some forced reps and pull, have someone pull the bench, press up and then I'll try to, you're right, like, um, what do we need to know about tracking our performance during intervals, whether we're running, biking, rowing, et cetera. 

Alex Viada: Yeah, because I, I think there are two people who need to track their power very, very carefully, and their output very, very carefully. Uh, one are very, very high level athletes because at that level, when you're so dialed and you're training, you're not just training to be better, you're also training for a specific type of output. 

Like if you're a cyclist, you need to know how much power you're putting out for how long you need to know, because all of that's important for planning your season. You're, you know, you're a pro cyclist or a pro runner. You've got a race coming up and you're saying, wow, after seven and a half minutes, my power output drops by 7%. 

That is 2% higher than usual. Something is wrong. You're like, in that case, yeah, sure that matters. That's telling you, okay, hey, something's going wrong here. I should stop this interval. I'm pushing too hard. The other thing, the other person who needs to. Relatively new to this and you are learning for the first time what it's like to actually modulate your output. 

And what I mean by that is something that's kind of important to hybrid training as well is realizing that not all of your hard work needs to be super hard. We have our VO two max type intervals, right? Our high intensity, like going nearly all out, crushing yourself something you only hold for a couple minutes. 

We have our low intensity, which is our zone two, and then we have a lot of that threshold type of intensity. You know, like when most of us just go out for a three, four mile run and we push it pretty hard, you know, it's like our 5K, our 5K pace, our 10 K pace. There's a lot of value to being able to do things just a little bit below that threshold. 

And so like let's say I can hold a nine minute mile for an hour and I say, okay, I can hold a nine minute mile for an hour that, that's like close to my threshold right there, much faster than that. And the time goes down dramatically and you know, but there's a lot of value then in saying, okay, well how about just slightly slower than that, a nine 15 pace, just a little bit slower. 

There's a lot of research that shows you get a lot of benefit from going just a little bit under threshold. The threshold, but it's a lot less cost. So, you know, you can, let's say you can hold, let's say you can a for an hour, an so say, okay, well run three by 12 at. Each interval should feel pretty much okay. 

And you can get in a lot of good work there. So that is one example too, where you wanna be really careful about pace because you go, I'm really trying to get a target level of intensity here. That's really important because if I do too much, I'm burning myself out. And if I do too little, I'm not getting the stimulus I thought. 

But when you're talking about like somebody who is not the super elite and just wants to do some of this high intensity stuff for the first time, if like, let's say somebody who's never done four by four intervals or micro intervals, you know, 30, 30 goes out there and goes, alright, like I'm getting on my stationary bike or whatever, I'm getting on my air done. 

Alright, I just chewed out 4 75 watts average for that first 30 seconds and then they rest. And the second one they go, okay, four 80 watts, I'm getting even better. And then the third one they crack and they're like, wow, 20 wat, alright, I'm dying here. Okay, 80 watts, like I'm, I'm crashing hard here. I guess the question is with that, in a lot of cases, cases, was that 490 watts in the beginning just wildly overcooking it? 

It could very well have been. If once they get more experienced, they might be saying, you know what, if I do four 20 watts on the first one. BBO two max. I'm pushing perfectly on every single one. A lot of us have the tendency to push too hard, too early on, and then crash and burn later on. That's okay. And so what I tell people is, Hey, just keep going a little bit. 

What's gonna happen when you do these is you're gonna push yourself way too hard. Your power's gonna drop off dramatically. The next time you're gonna go, eh, let's start a little bit more conservative. You might last a little bit longer. And then eventually you're gonna kind of figure it out. Now, of course, if it's the kind of thing where, you know, like let, let's say, let's say again you're like, oh, okay, this sounds good. 

I'm gonna try three rounds, four minutes 30, 30 sounds great. And you know, first round you're like, cool, I'm 400 watts on all of them. This is great. Second round, 400 watts on all of them. Third round, my legs are toast, my arms are toast, my back is toast because I'm doing it on the airdyne and I'm like, I can't even get to 300 watts. 

I'm just, you know, I'm just crouched over this thing. I can't even think about high intensity. Yeah. At that point, it might be worth saying, Hey, you know what, like, this isn't even just me overcooking it at this point. My arms are just exhausted, my legs are just exhausted. So it's always the question if, if you feel like you're just not recovering because you pushed it too hard, this the round before, keep going. 

See what happens. Use a better strategy next time. If you're just hitting that wall because of complete fatigue and you're just saying, you know what, I'm, I turned myself inside out and I'm just shelled, then yeah, you know, you can think about, okay, at this point I should back off. Because, you know, again, it, it gets complicated too because there's a lot of stuff around, a lot of discussion around, okay, well if you're running zone two and your heart rate starts going up and you get that cardiac drift, people talk about. 

Sure. That might be a sign that you're probably done with a session and things like that. But a lot of this higher intensity stuff, again, like I wouldn't worry about it quite as much because it's really, really difficult for anywhere from beginner to even advanced intermediate to know exactly how much power to put down. 

So you're always gonna get these peaks and troughs throughout workout.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. That's such a, a important lesson if you're listening because it, you learn, I, I, I think it's a really important point that you gotta get in there, you gotta play with this stuff. But I always, when my clients, when I have them going into to do intervals for the first time, I'm like, look, build up slowly. 

Right? I want you to kind of finish the intervals. Don't blow yourself out when you know everyone starts, especially guys. Right. You know, and I'll give 'em something like a minute interval and they're like, or, or I've given three, four. One thing that's fun is giving longer intervals and say, what I want you to do is I want you to make it through the intervals. 

'cause I've had clients like, oh, well I couldn't do four minutes on the second round. I totally like, I stopped at like two minutes. It's like, well then you, you, you're, you're not pacing yourself, but what I hear you saying, if you're not an elite athlete, it's okay to kind of do that and learn the hard way. 

And then, 'cause I'm, I'm kind of a, I'm kind of a wimp these days with that, but I've done a lot of hit training starting, I don't know, a long time ago. So I'm like kind of a wimp when it comes, like if I, if I see my wattage go down, I also organize things around jujitsu performance too. So that, that's another important point. 

If you are. Participating in a sport, like you said, Alex, you're you're gonna be, even if you're not like super elite, which I'm not, I still don't want to gas out and have these 28-year-old dudes, you know, completely dominating me on the, the mat just because I went a little too hard on my intervals on Monday. 

You know?  

Alex Viada: I was gonna say, yeah, exactly. The last thing you want is to be like, why are you all gased out? Oh, my, my conditioning work. Wait a minute, that seems backwards. Like my conditioning gets me exhausted. Yeah. I, I, I think I'm, I'm with you there. Like, there's definitely the case where, you know, if you do, if you're like, Hey, you know what, these are just taking it all outta me. 

And like I said, because the other important thing is remember, is like, it doesn't, it doesn't have to be a magic dosage because yeah, four by four might be minutes might be what the research shows the most people. In a workout might be just as almost as good. Like we're talking, you know, 92, 90 5% of the benefits. 

Like, you know, if you're, if you're the kind of person who's like, Hey, you know what, even taking a little bit conservative, like, once my power starts dropping, like I'm, I'm being good about it, you know, I'm pacing myself early on, but when I get to that third round, like I just start tanking tank, it could be too much. 

And like I said that because that's another thing that, you know, a lot of the hybrid training is about, is like, you don't need an optimal stimulus on every single thing. You can have a 90% effective stimulus on 10 different things, and overall you're, you're gonna be better off for it because you've got so much going for you. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah. And I think that's a important point as well, because. If you're programming one of the things, well, I'm in a phase right now, for example, where I'm really focused on, I, I got a bit weak, I'm just gonna say like, I got a little bit weak 'cause of the injuries. I focused on a, uh, juujitsu. I was having a hard time pretty achy after, uh, juujitsu. 

And then so I would go into the gym and I wouldn't be able to push as much weight due to chronic injuries. I had stem cells and a bunch of other shit, you know. But, so my goal has been the focus around like building muscle, building strength to get myself back up to, you know, some standards that I have for myself. 

And you just said, well, you don't have to get an optimal stimulus every time. And so my question would be like, how do you know your. You are like, what do you track to know that you are doing things the right way if you're taking this hybrid approach?  

Alex Viada: Yeah. And that's, that can actually be really, really challenging. 

Because, you know, one of the, one of the things I always tell people is, and I think you know this, you know, everybody, everybody who's been doing this for a while knows that progress is slow. Like, you know, how much weight do you, you know, at this point, if I gain 10 pounds on my bench, press max in six months, I'm real. 

The equivalent of how many ounces per week, like it's imperceptible. There's nothing I can see. Chances are within a given month, there is more variety and there are more ups and downs between my bench press sessions than the overall difference between my bench now and six months from now. You know, if I, if I'm on a steady upward, very slow slope, the daily ups and downs, the weekly ups and downs are gonna almost completely obscure that very slow long-term progress line. 

And I think that's, that's something that's really tough for people to go, wow, I'm 3% stronger this week than last week. I'm 4% weaker this week than last week, and I'm three point. But as long as that trend over time, you go, well, after six months, I'm 1.5% stronger on average, you go, that's great. But of course, like you said, that's, that's really, really tough to track day to day. 

And so, you know, usually the, the thing I tell people is that it's gonna be difficult. It's gonna be difficult to know if you're doing enough because you're not gonna see that linear progress. And you may find yourself in a couple of down weeks and think, God, am I, am I doing too little? Is that why I'm not making any progress? 

You know, I, here I'm thinking, okay, you know, three by three minutes in my high intensity session is enough, but four weeks have gone by. I don't feel like I'm getting any better. Am I getting worse? That can be really, really tough. So that's, that's when a lot of it, you have to kind of have some trust that you're doing all the right things, you're doing all the right pieces, and you really, really, really are tracking your data. 

And I know this doesn't mean necessarily like getting hyper fixated on, you know, your Garmin Connect and you know, your Strava data and looking at every little beat. Like, you can do that if you want, but for the most part I'm just like, you know, it's, it's really important more than anything that you not just track how you perform on a workout, but you track how you felt on that workout. 

Because that can be one of the most important things to track over time is, you know, you may be, you may be saying, okay, I've been doing the same three by three for five now, and my average power. You know what? My average effort, I started out rating as an 8.5. Now I'm saving, my average of effort is like a seven, 7.5 maybe. 

Maybe I'm getting better here. I'm just not pushing myself harder. Maybe I should, you know, put in another five wa here, put in an extra round here. So I'd really encourage people to track things on both the objective side of things and subjective side of things, and be as absolutely diligent in their subjective progress as their objective progress. 

Because that's one of the best ways to notice all these little subtleties in your training. And of course, the other thing is also like there are just certain truisms, you know, you if you're getting between 30 to 45 minutes of threshold. Week, you're probably in the top percentile. You should make some good progress with that. 

If you're getting 80 minutes total of some form of conditioning, zone two or higher, you're probably in the top echelon already. And if you can't make progress on that, consider shifting the balance a little bit. And, but otherwise just, you know, kind of working around with that. The biggest thing I do is like, let's just say I'm in the weight room and I, my goal is to get stronger. 

The stronger squat. Squat. So I'm gonna, my max now squat whatever hundred, and I'm gonna use those little charts that says, okay, five pounds means I can do three sets of eight at four pounds. Or whatever week goes by, I'm gonna say gonna, okay, now I can do three sets of eight at two, but. I'm still just gonna use four next time, five, 10 next time, five 15. 

I'm never actually gonna test that Max, but I'm gonna adjust all my percentages in the gym as if my max had gone up just a little bit. Just a little bit each week. Same thing with wattage, same thing with paces. I think my VT max wattage output on the bike is 50, and when I do these intervals, I'm hitting them at like four watts. 

Okay. I'm gonna try to say, on average I wanna hit them at watts and Watts. That sort of weekly tracking the average up and aiming for just a 1% increase per week in everything. Easiest way to just confirm that you're on the right. Some weeks you fall short, some weeks you go over. But as long as you're constantly upping that little max number, upping that wat number upping whatever, and staying around that line, you'll know pretty quickly if you're falling above it or below. 

If you're falling below it, then you know you need more volume or you might need more recovery.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. So Alex, you mentioned a couple wearables, I'll tell you. So I'm interested in improving my cardiovascular conditioning and taking a more, let's say, uh, data oriented approach where I'm tracking things. I got an no ring, it tracks my resting heart rate, it tracks my HRV. 

I know it's not the best way to take HRV according to guys like, uh, um, Mike, uh, Mike Nelson, Dr. Mike Nelson, who I'm sure you know. Um. But what are the best ways to track what you're talking about and what if we, I'm gonna hit you with a two part question here. So, so what are the best ways to track our progress? 

And what if we're using different equipment, like I'm using the rower for some things and using the spinning bike for some other things, or the assault bike like or, or the skier. How do you recommend someone approach that?  

Alex Viada: I mean, honestly I'm a big fan of people just setting, whether they test it or they just guesstimate it, set yourself goals in every single one. 

And I, I think what, you know, because you, you'll, you'll have to figure out a different wattage output for the assault bike and the stationary bike and the skier and the rower and possibly the different kind of rower over there that, that one gym has, because it's not a concept two. And this, you're like, wow, I'm tracking like 10 different pieces of equipment and you know, like that's, that's okay. 

It can just be a little notepad on your computer. You know? It's the reason I like that, the reason I like that approach though, is you'll start to appreciate as well that you're gonna go through phases when you're gonna improve like crazy and you're gonna have these newbie gains and you're gonna be excited and you're gonna be driving yourself and you're gonna say, alright, a salt bike. 

I just, I budged on that one in a couple months, but my rower and my skier are just exploding. That's great. You know, because it's, you're not always gonna be flourishing in everything. And part of, part of the other hybrid thing that I really enjoy is it gives you the chance and it gives you kind of permission to lean into what you're really enjoying at that time, because you're gonna keep doing the rest. 

I'm gonna keep doing my salt pipe once every two weeks. You know, I'm using eight different machines. I salt pipe once every two weeks. I haven't touched my wattage on that, but I'm really enjoying the rower right now. I'm gonna keep doing it. I dunno, but I love it and I'm making progress. So for that, and because you do, you do have to track them all separately because every single one of them, different muscle groups, different movement patterns, different efficiencies, inefficiencies. 

If you are a world class rower and you do an off season where you do nothing but cycle and you get yourself from a mediocre cyclist to a world class cyclist, you'll come back and be a worst rower. It's like, you know, there's, there's not much carryover between a lot of these things. So I really tell people like, Hey, have fun with all of them. 

Track them all. Give yourself 20 different things. Give yourself the, the permission to PR and something every single week. It feels good. It keeps you engaged and it really gets you sinking your teeth into new things. Because one of the other things that I think is really, really important, I say as we get older, but this is equally as important for like kids starting out, you know, high school sports. 

Middle school sports is developing new skills and new competencies. It's like one of the most important things you can do for your brain, for like, you know, avoiding any sort of, you know, mental cognitive decline for, you know, helping to avoid any sort of physical decline. Keeping your coordination, keeping your ability to move, keeping your ability to respond to new things. 

The more exercises, activities, modalities you use, the better your brain is at learning and remembering how to move and adapting and being just capable and durable. So, yeah, like I said, we're really long, convoluted way of saying like, track 'em all, do 'em all. It's, it's a, it's like a can't lose. So,  

Ted Ryce: yeah,  

Alex Viada: I, I was gonna say, and on the wearables thing, you know, the, the URA is fantastic for a lot of things. 

I know, like there are probably some better options for this, that, and the other. Uh, for tracking exercise, you know, there's so many watches out there. There are the garments, the choros, the Apple watch, uh, the new Amaze Fit Watch and all of that. I, I love Garmin's activity tracking because their RM plus monitor, they have the ecosystem. 

That's is the ecosystem. It's so easy to just pop into your Garmin Connect and look at everything and gives everything a lot of other devices out there. Like I, I picked up this watch and it, what is it, seven it, it's called a ma fit is the company name, and this is called the BI two. So this is a mid-range garment. 

This is show you, this is, this is a high range, high range garment here. This is their Enduro, I think this is their Enduro two. I'm holding my hand here. I'm currently wearing, what is this generation's more mid-tier because I wanted to check it out. And these are eight, 2000 watches, if not more. The amazed Fit two that I'm holding in my hands here tracks your heart rate, tracks your activity, heart rate, heart rate variability, all these other things. 

And I think this is 90.  

Ted Ryce: Wow.  

Alex Viada: Doesn't ecosystem, but if you're just getting started and you're like, I have never looked at these reports before in my life, I wanna see what they're all about. Pick up one of these, it, it'll, it's so worth just saying, alright, for the first time I'm gonna have a dedicated activity watch and I'm gonna look reports and I'm what my rate on all these runs. 

And it, it can be really, really cool to look at for the first time and then you decide, hey, I really love this. I would say get yourself a base model, like entry level Garmin and just pop into their ecosystem and you'll, Garmin's ecosystem is the kind of thing where if you would just have a casual passing interest in it, you can find stuff that's useful to you. 

They present a lot of stuff. They'll give you trends. They'll say, Hey look, it looks like your anaerobic threshold is improving. Consider doing more aerobic work. It's actually pretty good most of the time it's worth paying attention to. And, but then if you really wanna dig into it and get super over the top nerdy with it, it's got that for you too. 

Ted Ryce: Great advice. Yeah.  

Alex Viada: I'm not paid by garment. Quite the opposite as a matter of fact.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah, you're helping keep them in business, huh? So me, same thing with Aura. I talk about Aura all the time. I had a little bit of a relationship with them, but then, uh, the CEO, they change the co I would actually like to connect with them again, but anyway, or if you're listening anyway. 

But, uh, yeah, it's so important if you're looking to improve, uh, if you're, if maybe tracking some of the performance on across different modalities, different extra, uh, cardiovascular machines might be a bit too much. But you want to get into tracking, get yourself that. What, what is the name of the watch again? 

The Little  

Alex Viada: Maze Fit Here.  

Ted Ryce: Little Maze Fit. Okay. Yeah. Get that Maze Fit. The maze fit. Yeah. I'll have the link to that on the show notes for this episode in case you have trouble, you know, Googling it after hearing this. And then if you like how that goes, upgrade to a garment. Just, uh, spend the 5, 6, 8, 1000. 

It's how much an Apple watch costs, isn't it? So it's kind of the same thing. Oh  

Alex Viada: yeah. I was gonna say though, you can find some of the base model garments for like a couple hundred. So it's not, it's not too bad. And you know, like I said, one of the things that is nice about it too is the garments, since it's, and most of these watches since they have 20 different activity profiles, it'll track it for you. 

You wanna know if you're getting better at rowing, you wanna know if you're getting better at cycling. Like it, it's gonna tell you based on which one you pick, whether or not your workouts are improving week to week. Like a lot of 'em will track your thresholds differently on each one. So really let you know. 

So it's a, it's a really good way of just saying, giving yourself a little bit of extra confidence in whatever you're trying, that you're getting a little bit better, a little bit worse, like what you need to do. So. It's, it's useful there. I think a lot more of these manufacturers now are realizing that people like doing a lot of different stuff. 

So like, let's let them do a lot of different stuff and help them do it.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. And Alex, in the past it's all about, like, when I was got into this stuff maybe 10, 10 years ago when I started hitting the wall in, in Jiujitsu performance, and I thought it was the story. I don't know if I ever told you, but I thought I got old, right? 

Like, oh, I'm, I'm just old. That's why I am like not performing well. And then, uh, actually it was longer than 10 years ago. It was more like when I was in my early thirties and then I came across Joel Jameson's work and I'm like, oh shit, I'm just really outta shape. Even though I'm doing high intensity intervals, if you will, during jiujitsu training, I, I really got outta shape like. 

My performance just started decreasing, decreasing, decreasing. Now I wasn't tracking, I didn't have an OR ring and other stuff, but when I started doing zone two, that's when that's when kind of things changed for me. So this can be super helpful to track this stuff. If you're, if you're like not sure, like you said Alex, you can track like, Hey, are you getting better? 

But my question was, in that time I had to wear a chest strap garments. Do they use chest straps or have, have the watches gotten better or not, like evolved away from that?  

Alex Viada: Yeah, so the, there's always, they, they have optical sensors. Every generation, they're trying to get better, but I think at the end of the day, there's still certain limitations to the optical sensors where they're never gonna be quite as good because, you know, they rely on, they rely on a certain amount of. 

Like, you know, different, different wavelengths penetrating the skin and looking at changes in, uh, basically changes in like oxygen concentration of the blood. You know, looking at when blood vessels swell and contract to check heart rate and this and that and the other. It's, so anytime that you have a device that moves it all, there's things between it and your skin. 

There's hair, there's sweat, there could be tattoos In some people's cases, um, there're gonna be movement artifacts. Like for example, if it's tracking swelling and contraction. What's really interesting is that swinging your arms too vigorously will actually cause momentary changes in like the blood concentration in your arms. 

Because if, think about it, if you swing your hand really quickly, all that blood that would normally be getting pumped out, you know, by venous action is actually pooling in your hand. So if you swing your hand really hard, your blood vessels are gonna see a sudden anticipated dilation in the arm. So that could make it hard for this. 

To actually track whether the blood vessels are filling, because water's pumping, blood is pumping in or pumping out. So all this stuff affects it. So that's, they're trying to get better and their algorithms, they're spending oodles of money on trying to improve them. Chest straps are still gonna be the gold standard. 

I still use a chest strap when I really care about the data. If I'm just going for like a zone two bike or you know, zone two activity, I typically don't use one because for zone two, I just like being able to pass the talk test. I think that's much more reliable than my heart rate. I just think when I do zone two training, I usually just check in with my breathing, see if I'm capable of like having a, you know, have a Bitly, a brisk conversation, but having a conversation. 

If I think, no, I'm breathing too heavily to have a conversation, I know I gotta slow down. So I don't wear a chest strap for that because I'm like, Hey, you know what, if this is a little bit inaccurate, doesn't matter. I'm not going by that. If I'm doing really, really dialed in intervals and high intensity work, and I'm like, all right, I'm really interested in seeing how close to my max heart rate I'm getting on this harder work, wanna make sure it's the appropriate intensity, then I'll use a chest strap. 

But I don't think it's necessary if you're just saying, Hey, like, I just wanna move in the right direction. I don't have any, you know, 5K race aspirations where I'm looking to get 30 seconds faster. I just wanna be in good shape. I just wanna get a little bit better. I'm doing conditioning as an adjunct to something else. 

Ted Ryce: What I love about this conversation is that you've worked with, uh, like me, I, I work with people and when I talk about things sometimes on social media, people get annoyed with me because I'm always coming from the context of having worked with a lot of people. Meaning, some of the stuff I might suggest might not be optimal in terms of like what the research says or what the experts say, but it's like, man, people ain't gonna do that if you ask 'em to do it. 

Right? Like you we're dealing with human beings here and not working with elite athletes. And I, you know, I'm, I'm great at what I do, but. I wouldn't be the person to even work with when it comes to, you know, high level athletes. Right. So I love this conversation.  

Alex Viada: Yeah. Because I think what matters so much more for most of us and for most people who are interested in this stuff, I would much rather somebody be out there and during their conditioning, their tracking, their effort, by seeing how they feel, seeing how good they feel. 

Thinking about, okay, am I pushing a little bit too hard? Am I pushing a little bit too easy? Like, I wanna feel good when this session is done. You know, let me, lemme stay engaged with the feeling of this exercise. That's what matters. I don't want them to be sitting there looking at their data and slavishly devoted to this and thinking, oh, do I need a new chest strap? 

Do I need a new heart rate monitor? What other gear do I need to do this perfectly? I'm like, if you're doing the right thing that feels good and feels right and you're doing it, you're working hard. When you need to work hard and you, you're resting when you need to rest, you are gonna be doing so well. 

Like, that's 95% of the battle right there.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. So important. And now I want to take things in a different direction that's, that's, uh, somewhat related. There's so many different, let's call them experts. 'cause you know, uh, saying different things. For example, I had Brady Homer on my podcast. He wrote a book about VO two max training. 

And, uh, he's, he was on Rhonda Patrick's show not too long ago. You, you would be great on her show, also on Peter Atias show. Would love to see you there. So Brady came on the show and he said something really interesting that a lot of other people, other experts, let's say, don't say he, uh, he, he wrote a great book. 

I read it. What he said on the show was that for people who don't have a lot of time, like don't spend your, let's say two or three 30 minute sessions doing zone, uh, zone two training, right? Get in some higher intensity work because you're, you don't have or are not willing to devote the necessary time to see a significant change in your VO two max in your cardio respiratory fitness as a result of, you know, just kind of getting a couple times a weekend. 

Then just today, I'm, I'm gonna hit you with a few different things and I want your perspective. So, Peter Attia today talked about how like 80% of your training should be zone two. Only 20% of it should be in a higher range than zone two. Of course, he, I, he kind of went to zone five, right? And just kind of, you know, got rid of the threshold, didn't really talk more, uh, much about the threshold, but that's what he said. 

And then there's another guy, I don't know if you know his name, Alan Cousins. I think he's, he lives in the us. Do you know who that is? I,  

Alex Viada: I, yeah, I know of him. I dunno him personally.  

Ted Ryce: Okay. And he says he's on Twitter and he's saying, um, he's saying, look, here's what I want you to do. I want you to do zone one. 

I want you to do it for two hours a day. And like, I, I think very little, if any, uh, higher intensity work for the average person, not for elite athletes, right? So can you help me and everyone listening kind of make sense of all these different recommendations and what your thoughts are?  

Alex Viada: Sure. So the first thing I'm gonna say is that there are so many different definitions of zones that sometimes it can get horrendously confusing. 

There was uh, there was some big name articles. It's some big studies coming out that were saying, yeah, like all of these elite triathletes are doing most of the work in zone one, not even zone two. Right. And when, but when you looked at those studies, what was interesting was that the definitions of zone one and zone two they were using were different than the definitions of zone two and one zone one that are used primarily in the US because there are a couple of different systems. 

A lot of the Swedish, Norwegian, like the, the Scandinavian method uses a zone one definition that encompasses up to about 70. Is it 75% to 78% of maximum heart rate, or either way, their definition of zone one that they use there actually pushes well into our, I say our, but the kind of the Western, you know, the American were more familiar with pushes into our definition of zone two. 

So it doesn't really differentiate between low zone two work and what we would consider zone one. So a lot of times you'll see people going, oh, these elite athletes are doing a lot of zone one, Killian Jne, the, you know, famous ultra runner, incredible mountain climber. This does everything says, yeah, I do 80% of my work in zone one every year. 

Uh, you know, every, every training session. But if you look at it, his definition of zone one, most of that will be what we consider, oh yeah, that's zone two. So it's a little bit difficult sometimes to really, and it can be really, really confusing because you'll see people saying, oh, you should do zone two. 

Oh, you should do zone one. I, I usually, that's why I use the whole like ventilatory threshold. There are, so you can have, there are entire papers out there discussing the merit of using like lactate levels and heart rates and percentage of wattage and this and then the other to differentiate between zones and it's all a mess. 

That's why I'm like, okay, let's just, let's just go for like the general gist of things here. Uh, you know, if you, if you can't get out a sentence, it's passed zone two. Like that's, that's all we need to know. And if your lactate levels are accumulating and metabolite levels are building up and you go from being able to do something for 45 minutes to being able to do only doing for 20 minutes, yeah, you've probably over your over threshold, you're over VT two. 

So like, that's it. So that's, that's one thing there. So I think when, when there's some people out there saying the majority should be done in zone one, I would always caution that what they may be referring to, in fact, the research they're looking at may be using a definition of zone one that most of us would consider zone two. 

I say most of us listening now, not Norwegian support scientists. So now the other thing is when it comes to saying, okay, so you know, Hey, I'm, I'm, I'm confused. I've got three 30 minute sessions per week. Should I be doing high intensity work? Should I be doing those four by fours every single day, or should I be doing most of this in zone two? 

So I think there's no question when you look at elite athletes, most of the work they do is easy. But you'll say like, Hey, we're looking. 'cause a lot of this was arrived at by looking at the programs of elite athletes. Okay? This elite athlete works for eight hours, trains for eight hours a week. This one trains for 16 hours a week. 

This one trains for 12 hours a week. You know, different sports and everything else. In most of these cases, you know, it looks like most of them are spending between two to three hours per week doing higher intensity work. You know, VO two repeats, subthreshold repeats, whatever, and all the rest of it is in that zone two easy work. 

So that's where a lot of that 80 20, 85, 15 and all that came from, most of it, you know, all of this easy stuff and a little bit hard, but they're still doing two to three hours of high intensity work per week if you've got three 30 minute sessions. No. The reason why they do so much of that is if they go from three hours of high intensity work per week to four hours of high intensity work per week, they may find themselves getting crushed. 

It's so hard at that level to add more high intensity work without turning yourself inside out, without not having enough time for recovery. You have the Norwegians who are doing two threshold sessions per day, in some cases, trying to cram in as much little threshold work here and there and high intensity work. 

And finally they're like, you know what? We can't fit any anymore here. We're just gonna fill up the rest with easy work. That, and, and this is what we end up with. If we try fitting in more high intensity work, our athletes suffer. So they go, alright, we can't really do any more high intensity. We would, if we could, it'd be great. 

We'd get, you know, potentially even bigger gains. And some athletes are experimenting doing that with cross training. But so the real idea behind that is, the way I always liken it to this is that your high intensity work is your protein and your fat and your zone two work is your carbs. And it's not that carbs aren't essential, it's that the most important thing in your program is you make sure you're getting enough. 

You know, you can argue, make sure you're getting enough protein, you know, because if that goes too low, you're, you're probably not doing that well. So if you got three by 30 minute sessions, you think, okay, could I make those haul high intensity? Probably would. I want to Absolutely not. Like I, I would like to just get on the bike one day and say, Hey, look, I've just got 30 minutes of easy work. 

Great. I can do two high intensity sessions per week. One can still be easy. That's fine. Ideally you'd say, yeah, if you've only got limited time, the more high intensity work you do, the better that you can recover. As long as you're not so sore afterwards that you can't do anything else, a greater percentage of high intensity is probably better. 

The nice thing about zone two work is it doesn't really interfere with, so look, if you're, let's say, let's say you're a busy professional, you got a lot of stuff going on. You've got another sport you wanna compete in jiujitsu, you've gotta spend time with your family. You don't wanna be sore every weekend. 

You don't feel like breathing fire. Every time you get on the exercise bike. You've got four by 30 minute sessions per week to train. You think, okay, I can do a high intensity session on Tuesday afternoon. I can do a high intensity session Saturday morning. The other two sessions I don't wanna be doing at that time of the week, and I'm gonna have no energy on a Friday. 

I'm gonna make those easy. That's perfect. Get in as much high intensity as possible up to, you know, and if you say, Hey, if I do four high intensity sessions per week, I'm just dead all the time. Probably not a good idea. Most of us though, if you're on truly limited time, if you're limited to like less than 80 to 20 minutes of total conditioning per week, you're probably not gonna overdo it on high intensity work. 

Because remember, a high intensity session might be 10 minute warmup, you know, five by three minute intervals. So that's 15 minutes total there with two minutes resting between and a 10 minute cool down. So of those 40 minutes, I'm doing 10 minutes high intensity, 15 minutes high intensity. So I think it's important to remember, like I am, I'm more of the camp that says, yeah, if you've got limited time, try to do as much high intensity as possible. 

But zone two is you're still gonna be better off doing zone two than nothing. So if you got one of those days and you don't feel like you know, coughing out a lung at the end of every single repeat, go ahead and do the zone two.  

Ted Ryce: Well, I, I'm with you on that. And just from experience of myself, it's like, uh, it's so, so important. 

And you, you said something that is so crucial. I, I think it was Alan Cousins who I was re uh, like a lot of people follow him on Twitter and then follow me, and then I said something like this the other day, like, Hey, if you don't have time, you better hit some intensity. And then it was all the people saying, oh, well all this high intensity work. 

It's like, man, these guys aren't, they don't even have that much time. So they're not even doing what you think, right? You're thinking in terms of, or at least these guys, it's coming across like, whoa, I train seven days a week. I can't do seven for two hours a day. I can't do like that much high intensity. 

It's like, yeah, but we're not talking about that. And another thing is, um, also Alan said something like, well, like if the best guys in the world are doing. 90%, he says zone one, which, you know, uh, to your point, he may be talking about Right. A different range. And, and it would, it would be good to have him on the show to clarify that, but yeah. 

And 10% or 20% of that higher intensity work. But to, with what you just said, that's talking about hours, that 10% or 20% or whatever, that's hours of high intensity. So it's just a completely different context. So important.  

Alex Viada: Yeah, because if I'm doing 80 minutes total  

Ted Ryce: per week,  

Alex Viada: I've got, alright, I've got my 30 minutes session Tuesday, 30 minutes session Thursday, and I've got 20 minutes on the weekend. 

If I'm doing 80 to 90% zone one slash two, I'm like, great. So my high intensity work is gonna be one interval on Saturday in the. 

More than that is probably still gonna be tolerable. Like I can still improve the reason why we restrict the high intensity work. Yeah, there's some adaptations. I think the most important thing to remember is that the reason why we do zone two primarily is so we can do a lot of it. And the reason why we wanna do a lot of it is because there are certain volume mediated adaptations to cardiovascular trait, some of the heart adaptations and all that. 

Like it just takes minutes per week. It takes hours per week to maximize those adaptations. Every extra minute you do is just a little bit more adaptation. And for some of these things, it doesn't matter if those are high intensity or low intensity or anything else. You're an elite athlete. You say I need 600 minutes per week of low intensity stuff to really continue making aerobic improvements. 

I'm a world class marathon runner and continue to make those incremental aerobic improvements. I need 600 minutes per week of training. If I try to do nothing but high intensity, I'm not doing 600 minutes. I'm not maxing out those aerobic adaptations. So you think I'm gonna do 80 minutes of high intensity work to really maximize all of those other cellular systems, and then I'm gonna fill in the rest with zone two to make sure I get a total at six minutes. 

Because there's that volume component. If you're like, Hey, I'm not even scratching that 600 minute mark, like I'm not worried about needing to fill in zone two to get my required volume. Get some intensity in there.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah, I'm, I'm with you on that. And, and so much research shows, like that's kind of what many people are missing with the metabolic dysfunction, going for a walk and getting your steps in. 

It's, it's not, unless you do a lot of it, it's just not gonna move the needle in a, in, in a meaningful way, or at least it may not compared to the high intensity stuff where Yeah. Um, if you get that, those muscles burning. Anyway, so this is such a great conversation and I wanna take it in a little bit of a different direction. 

You mentioned competing in jujitsu. Something I, I may never, ever do again. And the reason is because if I go into the adults, then I'm with all the 23-year-old monsters who train three times a day and their recovery is way better than mine. But if I go into the Masters, I'm with all the, the divorces. Who are on TRT and like have, have something to prove. 

So I'm like, I am not taking any, uh, uh, performance enhancing drugs specifically, or peptides. But I wanted to get into like, if someone isn't ready like me, I don't feel, uh, in the future, and I'd love to even have your thoughts about this maybe come coming back on the show and talking about this, but like in the future, okay, I might be open to, uh, taking testosterone or whatever we feel is the right thing to take to maximize performance, muscle health, whatever. 

But for those of us who don't want to inject testosterone and you know, we're interested and open to taking supplements, something like Uli a creatine, like whatever, betaine. I'd love to hear your thoughts on supplements, and then I'd love to, if you're, we had a little bit of a back and forth about this, but peptides, which peptides, by the way, if you're listening, it is just a chain of amino acid. 

There's all collagen peptides, but when people say peptides, right, with the, the quotation marks almost right with the air quote marks we're talking about these. Like the BP 1 57, the Motzi, the TB 5,000, or whatever the hell I like, I, I, I lose track of all the names. Can you talk about supplements for a guy listening right now who's 40 plus wants to maintain their edge, and then maybe we can talk a little bit about peptides and your thoughts on them. 

Alex Viada: Sure. Yeah. So, I mean, I'm gonna start with all the boring ones. Obviously I think creatine is fantastic. One of the things I appreciate most about it is actually it's neuroprotective effects. Um, especially, like I said, as you get older, it's, you know, if you're, if you ever have a history of things like, you know, potential head trauma, head injury, which I do, I had all sorts of concussions back in high school and all that. 

CRE does have neuroprotective effects on all that stuff. It can help, it can actually help with awareness and alertness, especially on low sleep. Basically, the, the fact that it's an, an energy source for cells just comes with all the good stuff that comes along with that, or it, it ups the size of the fuel tank. 

So I'm always one of those who's like, Hey, it's so cheap right now. If you're, if you're not taking it, you know, and I know there's a lot of back and forth, oh, how can you say people need to take a supplement? But it's one of those that's just, it's, it's like a free money sort of thing. It's a cheap supplement that helps everything. 

So I'm like, Hey, you know, and if you're one of those people who's like, oh yeah, I sometimes take it, I'm not consistent, then be consistent about it. You know, just get on that because it needs to build up and stay at a critical level.  

Ted Ryce: What, what about dosage? Because the original dosage was. Load for 20 grams for five days, then go to a five day. 

Uh, but now there's research showing that might not be a, and I don't think we know for sure, maybe you're aware of research that I haven't been exposed to, but like maybe 10 grams because the muscles are greedy. Right. So might need a bigger dose to get into the brain. What, what do you, what can you share with us about that? 

Alex Viada: There is some evidence that a lot of the neuroprotective effects and effects on things like cognition and, you know, uh, any sort of improvement in various, uh, neurological assays and things like that show that doses of 7.5 to 10 grams a day actually seem to be a little bit better. Whether or not, uh, you know, I usually tell people just split the difference. 

Day, you know, basically a heaping teaspoon of monohydrate is probably about right. Um, you know much more than that because there so many forms and you know, I, I tend to just say, look, when you start getting into, oh, well this cre cit and this, I just say take a heaping teaspoon of monohydrate every day, it's about seven and half grams, you're probably getting 95 to 98% of benefits. 

Yes. Theoretically, some of the other forms and going on the higher end may show some better benefits. For  

Ted Ryce: example,  

Alex Viada: uh, some of the other benefits you mean, or like some of the other forms?  

Ted Ryce: No, no, the other, uh, the other versions of creatine.  

Alex Viada: Oh gosh, there's, you know, there was what? Citrate and, you know, hcl l and all of those, uh, God, I don't even remember. 

I used to take so many different kinds. There was one kind that had the wonderful effect of it supposedly so fantastically easy to absorb, and it tasted like ground up aspirin with like lemon juice in it, like that awful chalky and whatever you added it to, tastes, nothing like that. So, yeah, I, those are some of the other forms that came out, so I'm just like, Hey, just, just stick with the monohydrate. 

It's fine. So that's one Beta alanine I think is fantastic. Beta alanine, I really appreciate just for the slight boost it has on most, uh, oxygenation and time to exhaustion, parameters, an endurance exercise. Now, even if your goal is not peak athletic performance, the fact that it lets you push yourself just a little bit harder and a little bit longer on your conditioning work means, hey. 

If someone was like, Hey, I can make your conditioning work two to 3% more effective every single day, would you take it? Yeah. And the nice thing about beta-alanine is some people get a flush if they take too much at once. You don't have to take too much at once. It builds up over time. So if you're like, yeah, you know, I tried beta-alanine and it made my face feel all tingly and I hated it. 

Take smaller amounts. Take a thousand grams or thousand grams, we'll do that thousand take a thousand milligrams three times per day, divided in doses. You won't get that flush. You get the same benefit.  

Ted Ryce: So the, the effective dose is three grams per day,  

Alex Viada: starts at about three grams, 3.5 grams per day is about where? 

Three, yes, 3.5 grams per day.  

Ted Ryce: So there's no point in taking like six or something like that.  

Alex Viada: It's again, it's one of those things where I've seen some research saying, yeah, six to 10 you get like more immediate potent effects and things like that. But I really find some people have difficulty tolerating that. 

Even people who aren't prone to like flushing at lower doses. If you're taking 10 grams a day and you're doing it in three doses of three grams a day, you might start to experience some level of uncomfortable side effects. That's just been my experience. I've had pretty bad luck with  

Ted Ryce: that. It doesn't bother me for some reason. 

I'm not that tough when it comes to you, you know, various sensations, but yeah, my face is itching. If it's an actual itch, that would drive me insane, but like, I, I don't know. I'm just like, oh, I feel like answer crawling. I, I probably shouldn't say this because if someone hasn't taken it before, but people, I, I actually, I'm joking because people have gone to the emergency room because they took a supplement. 

Their skin feels like it's crawling and they think they poison themselves, but it's, uh, it's completely normal. It's not as bad as it seems. But even if you do have that experience, like you said, Alex, you can just start with a, a lower dose and work your way up.  

Alex Viada: And the other thing I love are various nitrates. 

Like if you ever taken beet root, uh, beet juice,  

Ted Ryce: oh man, I've got beet ru uh, beet root powder right now. I try to keep a straight faced when I drink it. It is the nastiest supplement I've ever had. Maybe citruline malate, uh, form, a citruline malate that I try, but, but I think this is worse. I, I really have to stomach it. 

The juice is probably better, but I can't get it where I'm at here. I'm in Brazil right now, so,  

Alex Viada: yeah. Oh, God. Because sometimes if you can even find like pickled beets, like cans of pickled beets, that's, that's honestly, that was my go-to for a long time. I would just have a can of pickled beets and I would just have like one of those. 

And they're great because you can just slice it up, put a little bit of like, you know, whether you wanna put some kind of like, just like a little bit, uh, not, not ricotta cheese, a little bit of feta cheese on it, and like some cucumber slices. Oh, it's fantastic. So anyway, all of that, but any format pretty much does it. 

You can do the, the, the root extract. You can do plain old beet juice, you can do pickled beets, you know, canned beets, whatever you want. Um, I think that's a great supplement as well. You know, some of the similar benefits to oxygenation  

Ted Ryce: is that pre-workout or every day.  

Alex Viada: Yeah. But so there, there's actually interesting research that shows different benefits with immediate pre-workout. 

Like there's some acute effects from it and there's some chronic effects from it, both of which show marginal improvements in certain parameters of aerobic fitness. So you can, you know, if you, if you really want to ideally time it, you can have a, you know, a beet pre-workouts or if you're like, you know what, I can't stomach that flavor right before going for a run or gonna the gym. 

You don't want beet burps in the gym. You go, you know what? I'm just gonna make a point to get some beets in my diet. Great. That's huge benefit from that. And again, like the, the reason I recommend these three is because they're all relatively easy to incorporate. Like it's, you don't need, it's not a huge other thing to remember. 

It's all, you know, depending on the format, relatively easy to get and some of the more profound impacts, like that's the kind of thing. If somebody said, what are three things that you think everybody could do to make their exercise a little bit more efficient and help them recover a little bit better and perform a little bit better, it would be those three. 

Ted Ryce: How about, let's go a step further. What would be the things that are maybe a little bit more expensive or, you know, what would you recommend if someone was open to that?  

Alex Viada: So actually it's funny because, uh, you, one of the things, and this is even going a little bit further, you mentioned peptides. So BPC 1 57, a lot has been written about. 

There's a lot of stuff around it and healing and joint healing and all that. So its origin is, it's a gastric peptide. It's derived from the gastrointestinal tract. And what that means, first of all, is that you can take it orally and it resists breakdown, so it doesn't have to be injected. The other great thing about that is some of its most potent healing effects and some of its most potent effects on improving like vascularity, um, you know, epithelial cell migration and things like that can actually take place in the gastrointestinal system. 

What I really like about that, a lot of things, exercise in general, stress, certain kinds of diet, all that, all of those have an effect on our GI tract has an effect on nutrient absorption, nutrient reabsorption, I would say most of the population has, has or has experienced some level of abnormal, gastrointestinal, whatever you want to call it. 

There are a lot of colorful words we can use out there, like, let's just even say the last month. One of the nice things about BPC is that it seems to be able to help with a lot of those issues by helping to heal or at least helping to promote the healing. A lot of the lining, like the brush board membrane, a lot of the other linings in both the small intestine and stomach itself, but primarily the small intestine in terms of one peptide that I think is very safe to use, can be taken orally and can actually improve your health, or even just improve the quality of life in a marginal way. 

I've had a lot of people who have things like IBS symptoms or have, you know, issues with digesting certain foods or just have constant upset stomachs and things like that, who say that, yeah, doing a run of two to three weeks of just small amounts of BPC 57 orally has really shown positive effect and just helping to, for lack of a better word, stabilize their tract. 

Ted Ryce: How much is a small amount? Like what would the milligrams, if it's in milligrams?  

Alex Viada: I think 500 micrograms is pretty much the, the recommended dose on a lot of that. And you know, there, depending on who you talk to, there are different recommendations on and all that. Um, I'll say that, you know, for the most part they, you can buy BPC capsules on Amazon at this point and they actually contain a decent amount of the active ingredient. 

Uh, that's because it's not, it's not under any kind of, uh, uh, whatcha call it, um, patent right now. So it's easily available. So that is just one thing I would say. If anybody really wants to just play with something that is, I dunno if I can technically recommend it. I dunno if it's ready for human consumption or not, but that's one thing that I know a lot of people have benefited from. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah. And you're someone, there's very few people who I'd listened to about that and you were one of them because I even saw. These guys, because I don't know if you're on twi actually I know you're not on Twitter, right? Because I looked you up actually and you haven't posted since like 2017 or something. 

Yeah. And it was your company, uh, wasn't even you, but I saw guys Oh, you're saying it's active orally. I saw these guys saying, oh, well I use injectable for this and oral for that. And you gotta use 'em differently for different things. And there's so much bs. I mean, I don't listen to any of these guys. I pay attention to what they say, so I can ask someone like you about it. 

But I'm just, and uh, just a quick aside, if you're following some of these. People. Right? And you think they know what they're talking about because they use some sciencey words that they've got chat GPT to help them spit out. These guys are just talking about their own personal experience. They're not, again, do what you want. 

I'm not here to tell you what to do with your life. I'm a big fan of that. But if you want expert advice, go to experts. Not, not, uh, Reddit forums or the guys on the anonymous peptide. Guys. The Peptide Bros. On, on x.  

Alex Viada: I agree with that. I think to a certain extent it's almost like a, it's almost like a cargo cult because you have a lot of people who stumbled across peptides and are like, let's see what these do. 

Like I heard these do different things and they don't really know why it works. They just think they do. So they kind of come at it from that direction. Not to say there aren't some great ones out there, that's, that's always the tough thing, isn't it? Sure. 'cause you know, you're like, okay, most of them are terrible, some of them are right. 

They're dead on though. It's always difficult figuring out which is which. So I'm like, just, just approach everything with a healthy level of skepticism. And when in doubt, just take the most conservative approach that you can think of. You know, take out the hyperbole, take out anybody who says this is the best anything, take about anything. 

Use CCAs razor. If anything is complicated sounding, go with a simpler solution.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. And, and man, I, you know, I think about it 'cause some people have said, oh, it's better than stem cell injections or PRP for injury healing. And I'm just like. I don't know about that man. Like I haven't tried it. And, uh, perhaps I will and report back. 

I'll see if it's available here on Amazon. 'cause I'm in Brazil at the moment, but I will be going back to the state soon so I can pick some up. So 500 micrograms you said? Uh, for two or three weeks to see how you feel afterwards. And then would you just, last question, I know we're, we're, we're really pushing this over an hour here, uh, closer to an hour and a half, but when would you do that? 

Like how many times per year would you do that?  

Alex Viada: So for me that's almost an as needed sort of thing. And the reason is, uh, since it's not really disruptive to any natural ongoing processes, it doesn't cause the downregulation of any other enzymes. It doesn't cause the downregulation hormones. It's not one of those things where you necessarily have to be cautious about taking too much. 

Uh, I've not seen, I mean, or taking it too often. I've not seen any signs of, you know, any sort of buildup. You know, sometimes even various anabolic peptides have a drawback. If, if cells live too long, that causes problems. You know, if cells grow too quickly, that causes problems. It's a very well known condition from cells growing too quickly. 

Um, but with BPC, that doesn't seem to be the case. It's  

Ted Ryce: cancer folks.  

Alex Viada: Cancer. Yes. That's amazing. How many like, uh, different, uh, you know, compounds and longevity compounds where you're like, wow, if that worked as, as advertised, uh, that wouldn't be good. But with, with PC, it doesn't seem to be like that, that much of a big deal. 

So for people, I'll say like, you know, two to three weeks at a time, give yourself a week off or two in between. Not because, not because there's danger in taking it too long, but because you really wanna know if it's making a difference or not. If you're experiencing gastrointestinal symptoms, or even if you know, like, let's say you're dealing with some sort of, you know, injury or tendon injury or you know, open laceration, anything else that you wanna heal, take it for a time and then wean yourself off it so you know if it's actually effective. 

Because people who stay on it all the time think, oh my God, well I need it now. This is like my edge. This is what gets me healing fast. You never know that, that two weeks you took it, that three weeks you took, it may have been enough to get your stomach and gastrointestinal system back to normal. Let yourself come off it, trust your body and do the right thing. 

Only go back to it if you know you need it, which is just good practice in general  

Ted Ryce: wise advice. Alex, Ted, thanks so much, man. Just a great interview. We've, we cannot wait years, uh, to update. There's so too many things to talk about. And again, if you are listening right now, listen, I don't push books, but you need to read this book if you're interested in, if you're hearing all this stuff from Rhonda, Patrick, Peter Att, you're like, how do I put this all together? 

And you hear what Peter's doing and you think it's too extreme because he spends like six hours a week just doing zone two work. Then get Alex's book, ultimate Hybrid Athlete, a definitive guide for achieving peak athleticism across all disciplines. It's gonna be available December 2nd, 2025. Just in case you're listening to this much later. 

Get the book, read it. You're gonna be. So far ahead of all the other people talking about this stuff and trying to figure it out. Alex, man, just a pleasure. You're a great human being. You're an incredible source of knowledge. Thanks for your time today, man.  

Alex Viada: Thanks so much, man. Really appreciate it. Always great talking to you.